Our third ‘Runge Reads Throwdown’ is in the books and I couldn't be happier. For the first time we were able to field multiple teams, and as a bonus, each of those teams had more than 10 people on it. Almost half of those who signed up read more than 1,000 pages and each of our teams broke the 10,000 page mark. For three weeks of reading, those numbers are fantastic!

Our top reader was Jessica Villanueva, who read 14,539 pages. Take a minute to look at that number, folks—it's awesome! Second place went to Pedro Villanueva with 9,536 pages read and third place belonged to Lacey Olveda with 5,232 pages read. Jessica's effort led Team Gummy Shark to the team win with a total of 22,306 pages read for the team. That last day they were back and forth with Team Dusky Shark, who finished with 21,282 pages read. Team Silky Shark gave it a fantastic effort and had 15,345 pages read and Team Prickly Shark made up ground like a bandit in the last week to finish with 10, 551 pages read. If you figure 250 pages for an average book, that works out to right at 279 books in 3 weeks. That's amazing, you guys.

We certainly want to thank our readers for participating—you guys blew us away. But we also want to be sure and thank those who helped us with prizes for our readers: Wal-Mart #524, the San Antonio Spurs, The Texas State Aquarium, the San Antonio Zoo, the Magik Theatre, and Coastal Bend College. And let's not forget the community of readers that supported us all—to everyone who encouraged or challenged one of our readers, thank you. We wouldn't be here without you.